


Bluebird's Promise

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [9]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Beast Wirt, Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Prince!Wirt AU, otgw - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 06:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21352027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: Beatrice is done letting others suffer for her mistakes.  Wirt is her responsibility now - whether he likes it or not.
Relationships: Beatrice/Wirt (Over the Garden Wall)
Series: Prince of the Unknown [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516961
Comments: 19
Kudos: 181





	Bluebird's Promise

Wirt’s injuries close and fully heal in about two weeks—a breakneck pace for punctures that should have definitely killed him. He informs Beatrice and her siblings—who gradually lose their fear of approaching him—that the Dark Lantern alone sustains him, and yet they all shove food at the bewildered monster anyway at the stern encouragement of Beatrice’s mother. The woman rarely stops by to glimpse the fledgling Beast for herself; she sticks to doorways or hovers just outside the mill with her skirts dusting the snow, scolding that Wirt must be famished, poor boy. 

On an afternoon when Beatrice and Wirt are mostly alone (Florence, Calvin, and Edwin are out gathering twigs or something, and the rest of her siblings are finishing chores inside) the antler-crowned Pilgrim glares at Beatrice after she offers him a biscuit. He’s wrapped in an old grey inverness cloak of Beatrice’s father’s, and a button-up shirt of Andrew’s has replaced his ruined bloodstained one. If not for his messy brown hair and his _beastly_ adornments, Wirt might as well be one of them.

Even his stubborn streak would fit in well with Beatrice’s siblings. “I. Do. Not. Need it.” His pointed talons scoot the plate back to her across the dusty mill floor. “That could go toward feeding your brothers and sisters. I don’t deserve—I don’t _have_ to eat. It’s a Beast thing, all right? If I ever _do_ get hungry… I dunno, some birds will bring me seeds.” Or dead varmints. Or the _remains_ of dead varmints. Beatrice has already had to dispose of a badly gnawed and unrecognizable mammal carcass that a helpful wolf dropped off this morning. 

“Don’t be an idiot, and don’t call yourself a Beast,” Beatrice snaps back. She picks up the plate and shoves it into Wirt’s scrawny chest and he _has_ to catch the biscuit before it drops into the dirty hay and nobody can eat it. “It’s not like it’s your fault that this winter has been so hard. We’ll manage.”

With bated breath, the redhead waits to see how Wirt will react to that comment. Maybe he'll reveal his influence on the weather. Maybe he’ll figure out a way to force spring to arrive sooner. 

She’s disappointed when he shuts down, wilting like a kicked puppy, unable to meet her expectant gaze. 

“If I eat this,” he asks wearily, head hung low, “will you stop bothering me?”

Beatrice’s heart rate ratchets up to match her anger. This is a similar argument that Wirt has taken to repeating since he gained all his senses back; lately, she wishes he were still delirious. Much easier to cram food in his face that way.

The scathing volume of her voice sends a murder of crows flapping from the rafters. “Oh, I’m _sorry,_” she seethes. “Is my hospitality _bothering_ you? Gosh, I had no idea—how INCONSIDERATE of me! I’ve only been tirelessly nursing you back to health for WEEKS.”

She’s standing above him—looming, really, with her hands slammed onto her hips—and feels a brutal surge of satisfaction when Wirt obediently stuffs the entire biscuit in his mouth and sulks like a little boy. A fiendishly sweet smile about splits her face in half. “There, was that so hard?”

Wirt chews obstinately and crosses his arms. Beatrice nods as if he answered her, and flounces back toward the house. “Stay right there. Your most esteemed and generous hostess be back with some porridge.”

“Beatrice, wait—” 

Disordered shuffling behind her back tells her that Wirt has stood up. When the girl turns around, however, she’s exasperated that Wirt has yet to remove his feet from where he’s buried them in the hay. Beatrice already knows about the faunlike strangeness of his hooves and—to her credit—she’s never commented on them. So how come this imbecile keeps trying to hide that part of himself? She rolls her eyes and curtsies, pouring on the saccharine so thick it’s a miracle her teeth don’t rot. “Yes, honored guest? Did you want to request a spot of honey with your porridge? I’m afraid we don’t have any this late in the winter, but perhaps I could make do with… whoa, are you okay?” 

“Please, stop,” Wirt begs. Beatrice is mortified to hear the unsteadiness in his words. He looks… pained. As if Beatrice and her family waiting on him is literally torture. “Stop feeding me, stop giving me hand-me-downs to wear, stop being so…” The Beast fretfully wrings his talons. “_Kind._ I’ve already overstayed my welcome. I shouldn’t be here.”

“We would have kicked you out if you weren’t welcome anymore,” Beatrice responds, tentative. This is as alert and… energetic as her friend has been since she brought him home. And that doesn’t seem to be a good thing. “Florence and Edwin think you’re our pet. I know _they’d_ be really sad if you left…” 

Wirt had been asleep when the youngest ex-bluebirds decorated his antlers in popcorn strings. Beatrice hopes that reminding him of when he woke up with half the Unknown’s songbirds pecking at him would tempt a grin.

Instead, he looks as if he’s struggling not to cry. Before Beatrice can decide to yell at him or cajole him Wirt gathers his borrowed cloak tight around his shoulder and darts through one of the fissures split into the west wall. 

And she’s _just_ stepped forward to follow him (“Wirt, wait!”) when three of her siblings sidle into her way. Audrey is holding another plate of fresh biscuits; petite Cordelia and little Dante flank her, both jostling around their older siblings to get to Wirt first. All of them utter various sounds of disappointment and confusion at the sight of the very Wirt-less pile of hay. 

“Where’d your fawn go, Bea?” asks Audrey. There’s a teasing twinkle in her eyes that would drive Beatrice up the wall if Beatrice weren’t currently frantic to find Wirt. 

“Did he go to the outhouse?” demands Dante. “I was going to show him where it was!”

All of them had been horrified to learn that, since taking on his new otherworldly mantle, Wirt hadn’t eaten a single decent meal. This obviously meant that conversation steered toward what would happen when the starving Beast finally _did_ fill his stomach… Wirt’s nonplussed face when her younger brothers promised to show him how to use the outhouse had Beatrice laughing so hard she snorted.

What would make that same easily embarrassed boy want to run away? Especially after how quickly her family warmed up to him? “Everything’s fine—_move it!_”

She shoves past them and dives through the same space that Wirt used, snagging her skirt on the wall’s crumbled edge and swearing. Her siblings are either too stunned to follow her…

Or they know better than to get between Beatrice and her pet Beast.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Wirt leaves cloven tracks in the snow, distinct from a white-tailed deer’s thanks to the points of his posterior toes (claws? roots?) punctuating the main heart-shaped prints. Beatrice grumbles and storms as she follows his trail; the low-hanging sun casts an amber glow over the forest that would strike her as beautiful if she weren’t hunting down the biggest idiot she’s ever met. 

All this over a biscuit?! 

She’ll kill him. She’ll beat him over the head with his own Lantern until he apologizes for running away, and then she’ll beat him some more. “Overdramatic gnome,” Beatrice snarls. Rage sizzles through her anxiety so she stokes the flames, sneering past the dread of losing Wirt. _Again._ She shouts into the peaceful woods to flush him out, kicking at each set of hoofprints she trudges across. “Taking off without thanking us for giving you a place to stay is _rude,_ you know! For somebody conflicted about getting hand-me-downs you’re sure not shy about TAKING them!” 

Beatrice thinks she’s closing in. Then—impossibly—Wirt’s trail just… disappears.

She halts and turns a quick circle, searching for those recognizable heart-shapes. Nowhere. Nothing. Her eyes scan the trees, wondering if Wirt had somehow managed to scale one of the sycamores, but she catches no flap of a dark cloak nor the outline of his antlers. “Wirt?” Her tone is more worried than warning. “I’m sorry about the biscuit, okay? I was just giving you a hard time because SOMEONE doesn’t know how to accept positive attention!” 

Blue light chases away the sun’s spilled whiskey. Beatrice whirls to face Wirt—who has extricated himself, impossibly, from an arch of dormant honeysuckle. No hoofprints lead toward the shrub; Beatrice _checks._ “How… how did you…”

“A Beast thing.” Wirt replies, monotone. “Why’d you come after me?”

Inside, Beatrice is screeching with frustration. Outside, she squints as though she can’t believe the sheer level of stupidity she’s putting up with. “Um… because my whole family has been taking care of you for a few weeks, and they’ll be worried if you just vanish into thin air? Because we _like you?_ Cheese and crackers, Wirt, what is so hard to believe about that?” His mouth remains a paper-thin line. Beatrice forms exaggerated gestures with her hands, the way she explains large concepts to her younger siblings—or mundane concepts to her older siblings when they piss her off. “They think of you as part of the family now. Weird feet and all.”

No reaction. That stoniness deeply unsettles Beatrice. She recognizes that she’s far enough from home that she can’t see her house through the trees, and that she’s alone with The Beast, but the The Beast is Wirt and as long as she can remind him of that and bring him back this will all be fine. 

“It would be better if you didn’t have to take care of me anymore. If you stopped sharing your food with me, your supplies…” Wirt lifts the cape of his borrowed coat with one claw. “I’m a burden you don’t need. A parasite, leeching the life from those too generous to excise me from—”

“Save it for your poetry tome,” Beatrice deadpans. “How about you come back home because I _missed you?_ Is that a good enough reason?”

He finally lifts his stare to hers and a flare of warmth burns her face. He’s clearly taken aback by her authenticity. The redhead lifts her chin regardless, believing she might have convinced him. “Don’t read too far into it,” she orders. “I owe you one. For the wing-trimming.”

Wirt dons a blank mask. The scorch of his eyes doesn't leave her face. “You’re not giving up on me, are you?”

If this boy keeps making Beatrice roll her eyes they’ll fall out of her skull. “Nope.”

A beat. Beatrice clears her throat impatiently and almost misses a gleam of cunning that flashes in Wirt’s fiery blues. 

“You should.”

There are no clouds, but the late afternoon light dims, going from honey-gold to dark bourbon. Cobalt shadows stretch across the snowy forest floor. The temperature sinks and although Beatrice is bundled against the cold she can’t suppress a shiver that bites through her skin. Her pulse leaps. Her eyebrows fork downward in a threatening scowl. “Are you doing this right now? Is this...” Her arm sweeps to indicate the woods. “All you? Are you seriously throwing a _Beast tantrum?_”

Shade veils Wirt more thickly, obscuring him despite the fact that Beatrice glimpses the sun still floating above the forest’s highest skeletal branches. 

“What do you mean, Beatrice? Are you referring to the darkness, or the frigid air? I guess those are sort of my fault… Another Beast thing,” Wirt responds. His voice is smooth ice. “This is kind of all I do anymore. I can’t control it, if that’s what you’re wondering.” 

Beatrice’s teeth click together on the next question she wanted to ask. “Oh. Well… that’s fine. I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.” She pulls her knit shawl tighter around her lightly shivering shoulders. “By the way: this asinine game you’re trying to play right now—this ‘convince Beatrice I’m spooky and evil’ performance? Not buying it. I am, however, freezing to death, so if we could start heading back...”

Wirt stands so unnaturally motionless that Beatrice experiences a rising tide of revulsion. In Wirt’s reality she might call her nauseated reaction a trip through the uncanny valley; in this moment he appears so trapped between human and inhuman that her mind can’t make itself up. 

When Wirt speaks next, his lips hardly move, words echoing from the bare trunks stationed around them both. “What can I do that will convince you to let me go? Repay my debt to you?” 

“This isn’t about payback,” Beatrice insists. (This is about _her_ atoning for her mistakes, and she can’t do that if Wirt ends up as bad off—or worse—than before she found him.)

“...I could ask the animals to bring more prey for your family.”

It isn’t her imagination—shadows _are_ gathering around Wirt, slinking up from the snow and over his body. Sunlight still shines but in the immediate space surrounding them it is dark, darker. A central bloom of evening. “They’re happy to kill for me,” The Beast continues in a refined growl. “Anything you want. I could call a buck, and it would walk right in front of your gun. Pheasants lining up for your pot. More rabbits than you can skin. Shall I…?”

She’s drowning in the many luminous rings of his multicolored eyes. When had they changed from blue to blue-yellow-pink? When had he shifted from his nest to lean into her space, drawing close like a wolf coming in for the kill? Beatrice scuffs backward instinctively to maintain distance and nearly trips; were those _roots_ curving along her ankles?

“Maybe… ĭt̃'͂s͐ ̿ẽn̑o̎ug̾h̛ ̂t͘hãt̓ ̑I̎ ̀ṡp͑a̛r̕e͌ ̄y̌o͘ůr̄ ̑f̓ä́m͠ȋl͋y͝.” 

Syllables that ring in her head as much as they ring in her ears. Wirt’s eyes are the only brightness she sees. 

"A̚ȓȇ ̊y͝o͆ȕ ̅a̅f̽r̾a̎īd͌,̂ ͝B̒l̿ǔe̽b͗ir̛d͆?̽”

Beatrice slaps him. The sound cracks through the space like a gun firing.

Immediately those shadows flooding the area dissipate. Wirt gapes at her in the abrupt return of that ambient amber haze, one palm against his stinging cheek. 

“Were you doing that to prove something?” Beatrice can’t seem to breathe right. Her lungs are sieves, unable to capture enough air, thinning her tirade into harmless feathers. “Are you doing that stupid thing where you push people away so you can be alone? That’s not going to fly with me, sticks-for-brains.” 

His stunned expression breaks. Wirt hides his face in his ghoulish hands. After a trembling inhale, his voice sounds more like _him._ “...I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m s-sorry, I’m so useless…” Remorse fractures each syllable. “You can be mad. That was _dumb,_ I didn’t mean to… oh my god…” 

Beatrice thinks about when Wirt was an anxiety-ridden doormat terrified of judgment and being left behind. She thinks about him before the antlers and the claws and the hooves, forlornly watching her walk away. He had needed a friend. Somebody to remind him of his lingering humanity. And Beatrice had gone back to her family and _left him there alone_ because she was too scared to do the right thing— 

All she’s good at is throwing stones and letting the ripples hurt everyone around her. 

“Wirt.” Her voice’s bent-twig tension almost snaps. Beatrice blinks through the prickle of heat behind her eyes and steels herself for what she’s about to do. “Look at me.”

He doesn’t. Wirt’s staring at nothing at all, claws scraping into his scalp. “Have you ever suffered through a nightmare, and then opened your eyes to escape? Only, as you’re going about your business, you realize that y-you’re still _dreaming,_ an-and you never woke up? That’s how I feel, every day. Like I’m just moving through different layers of the s-s-same nightmare. A somnambulist. I dream that I’ve h-hurt people, and then I wake up to find that I _am_ hurting people… I’ve hurt people, Beatrice.” He’s stricken—eyes overflowing—and his tears have a smokiness to them like ash dissolved in water. “I’m just like him,” Wirt chokes. “I tried to be good but I’m just like him, I really am _The Beast—_” 

Beatrice blinks at the harshness he shoves behind the name, stunned. This edge in Wirt, this serrated side of him that he’s trying to cut her with… all at once she sees him as a jumble of broken pieces that _she_ helped to break, and her heart tugs at the lump in her throat. Wirt cannot be fixed with a pair of magic scissors. He’s a monster and Beatrice stepped back and let him _become_ a monster and looking at how he cringes away from her makes her want to cry.

So instead of crying, Beatrice gets furious.

“_Look._” Her fingers fist in his cloak. “At.” She pulls him to face her. “Me.” 

Wirt’s eyes are round as dinner plates. His resentment evaporates—he looks like a deer that’s just accidentally leapt in front of a crossbow. He is _terrified._

“I’m sorry.” Words dumped into the air with all the grace of somebody dropping a stack of dishes. Beatrice knows she’s scarlet to the roots of her hair and that makes her even angrier. How dare this little weasel force her to worry about him? Wirt thinks he can descend into the darkest depths of despair and just… _get away with it?!_ “I’m sorry I didn’t take you with me after you turned me back into a human. I’m sorry I didn’t go back for you sooner. If I’d known that…” But Beatrice hadn’t known. And there is no use dwelling on all the months she hadn’t found Wirt, that dismal span of time in which he’d been through god only knew what. She cannot undo her mistakes or Wirt’s suffering; she _can,_ however, move forward. And she’ll drag Wirt along kicking and screaming by his antlers if necessary. 

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Beatrice continues stiffly. It feels as if she’s speaking past a brick wall, or a dam, holding back a deluge of tears that she _knows_ would freak Wirt out even more. “I just… wanted you to know that… I wish I could have been a better friend to you. When you needed me. I want to start being a better friend to you from now on. Okay?”

Wirt swallows. Nods, warily, as if expecting to be shot. “...Okay.”

The string tied between Beatrice’s throat and heart relaxes. “Really?” Then her eyes narrow. “Because I mean it. No more letting you wander off to be sad alone—got it? We’re in this together. Stick with me, or I’ll hunt you down and kick your butt so hard you’ll crap pinecones.”

“Thanks for that image.” Yet Wirt is deflating, shedding the animosity that studded him like thorns, not a Beast but a very, very tired boy. He sighs and his eyelids droop. “Beatrice?”

“Yeah?” It’s hard to keep relief from turning her into a puddle. She expected denial, bitterness, Wirt pulling away and disappearing into the woods. But then… this is still Wirt. Her wilting-violet pushover. His head even hangs in defeat—conceding to her friendship victory. 

“Will you… let go of me now?”

“Huh? Oh—sure.” She instantly frees his cloak from her deathgrip. The blush scalding her cheeks has nothing to do with poor apology skills. 

A subtle smirk passes over Wirt’s drawn features. Before Beatrice can smack him for it, though, he sighs, and melancholy wreaths his neck. “What exactly does this mean, then? Am I supposed to take you _with_ me to be sad? I need a supervisor for my permanent malaise?”

“You stay here, with me, _dolt._ With my family. And trust me—we will not let you mope. I think I heard my mother saying it was about time you got your own chores.”

Wirt hugs himself, not reacting to Beatrice’s lame attempt at lightening the mood. “I can’t exactly stay here forever. There’s… I have a duty that I must uphold. A role to play. The Unknown needs its Undertaker.” 

His mouth twists around the last word, the hue of his irises dipping toward indigo. 

“Who says you have to do it alone?” Beatrice challenges. “The Unknown has never had a Beast like you before. New Beast, new rules.”

“No. You… wouldn’t like what I have to do. What I’ve already done. I couldn’t ask anyone to—OW.”

He rubs the spot on his forehead where Beatrice just flicked him. “You don’t have to ask me. I’m telling you.” She jabs him in the chest, and when Wirt glances down she swipes her hand up to flick his nose. The Beast squawks indignantly, claws rising to protect his face, and Beatrice has to laugh: Wirt is damned to rule the forest as a demon but is still an easily prankable nerd. 

Hope nestles protectively around the half-hysterical laughter bubbling below her collarbones. If Wirt were really, truly lost, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. This has to count for _something._

Beatrice bites the inside of her cheek to trap any last nervous giggles and holds out her right hand, fingers curled except for her pinkie finger. “I’ll make you a promise, O Lord of the Forest. For as long as we’re both around, I’ll be here to remind you that just because you’re _The New Beast_ that doesn’t mean you’re any less of a loser.” She talks over his sullen mutter of “Gee, thanks” and pushes her proffered pinkie closer, as if threatening him. “I promise to keep your ass in line. You clearly need a babysitter, so that’s going to be _my_ job. None of this ‘lure innocents to their deaths’ nonsense like that first creep.”

_That_ line slams her with instant regret. She’d meant it to be a joke, but Wirt’s glowing eyes well up with those odd smoky tears and he’s staring beyond her, hunching over as if she socked him in the gut. Beatrice scrambles to correct herself.

“Not that you’d ever do that. You haven’t… you haven’t _done_ that, have you? Wirt? Talk to me, please.”

He sinks to the ground, making himself small. She lowers herself to her knees so she can still meet him eye-to-eye, and steels herself for some horrific confession. 

A confession she needs to be ready for, because she meant it about her promise. Beatrice has already made the decision not to abandon Wirt again and if that’s going to mean anything she has to step up _now._

The boy’s rib cage lurches erratically. The colors of his irises spin through concentric rings of blue, yellow, pink, and back again; he’s crumpling into a full-blown panic attack right in front of Beatrice. “M-my fault,” Wirt mumbles. The trees around them groan although there is no wind to bend them. “There were s-so many I didn’t save, I was too l-late… they were already gone and I couldn’t do anyth-thing, _useless,_ Beatrice, I’m _useless_...” 

The girl is silent. This winter _has_ been cruel… she can imagine, with a pit in her stomach, what Wirt might have seen. What he might have _done,_ completely on his own with powers he does fully understand. _I’ve hurt people, Beatrice._ Guilt makes her positively ill.

Wirt grinds a strangled noise when Beatrice reaches out to take his rough talons in her hands, weaving their fingers together so he can’t escape and wishing she were better at this heartfelt stuff. “Hey.” He shudders and closes his eyes, tears leaving ink-trails down his cheekbones. “Consider this day one of my promise. All your 'Beast things'… I guess I’m going to have to deal with it. I know you’re not a bad person, Wirt. Whatever you’ve been through… you don’t have to tell me today, or ever, if you don’t want to. But you’ll never have to go through the same thing by yourself again. I swear.” 

“Y-yeah?” He’s still trembling, but his eyes have shifted back to a steady blue smolder. He swallows and shakes out a breath before he can speak again. “Alright. Th-thanks, Beatrice.”

They’re quiet together. The woods settle. Sunlight that Beatrice hadn’t even realized was fading slowly drizzles marigold-colors in the sky. “Sure thing, dork. We should probably get back to—_jeez,_ what the hell?”

It’s her turn to hiss in pain, pulling her right hand back to inspect her palm. A tiny splinter has pricked through the skin enough to draw a single ruby of blood. Beatrice digs it out impatiently and shows her palm to Wirt, who blushes and stammers out an apology. With an impatient huff the girls rises and offers to help him back to his feet anyway—with her _unpunctured_ hand. They walk wordlessly side-by-side through the sunset-splashed snow back to the mill and pause only when Beatrice shoves Wirt into a bush for “thinking too much.” 

Nothing has been fixed. Wirt hasn’t shed the secrets that hang on him like his cloak. But Beatrice’s heart doesn’t feel so tight… and she thinks, maybe, that things are starting to mend.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Track: "Hymn For A Scarecrow" by Tally Hall
> 
> Yooo back in present time. Now the story can progress (?)
> 
> If anyone wanted a visual on Wirt's foots: https://imgur . com /YY0Vc0d  
You can think of him like a wooden faun. I guess.


End file.
